Artwork typically comprises many elements, often taken from many original sources. FIG. 1 provides an exemplary, very simple, page of artwork to be produced. It comprises an image area 10 and a text area 12. Image area 10 includes an image of a person covered by the letter T surrounded by a neon effect 16 and text area 12 contains lines of words. A neon effect is a gradual changing of color surrounding an object within an image.
Artwork typically also contains graphical elements where the term "graphical" refers to elements which can be described as vectors or collections of vectors.
The artwork of FIG. 1 can be pre-press artwork, such as an advertisement or illustration, to be printed on a poster, in a magazine or newspaper, etc., or it can become part of a multi-media presentation. A pre-press example will be provided hereinbelow and utilized throughout the present application.
FIGS. 2A and 2B illustrate the prior art process or "workflow" by which the simple artwork of FIG. 1 is produced and indicate the output of most of the pre-press operations. Operations which are interactive are so noted by double boxes. FIG. 2A illustrates the basic workflow; FIG. 2B illustrates one possible correction process.
An artwork designer first plans the page of artwork. To do so, he selects the elements, such as a photograph of the person 20 with a cloud 22 in the background, the lines of text and a large font T, to be placed on the page.
Then, he instructs a production house to scan (step 30) and color correct (step 32) the photograph thereby to create a digital image 24. The scanning and color correction steps are typically performed on a scanner, such as the SMARTWO manufactured by Scitex Corporation Ltd. of Herzlia, Israel.
Finally, the designer instructs the production house to mask out (step 34) everything but the person 20. This can be performed manually or with an interactive software package such as the MASKCUTTER package, also manufactured by Scitex Corporation Ltd. The result is masked image 26.
The artwork designer also prepares, in step 36, a "layout" 21 which is a blank page of a desired size. In step 38 the designer defines the areas where the artwork elements are to be placed and their shapes. The artwork of FIG. 1 has two rectangular areas, one for each artwork element.
In step 40, the artwork designer assigns the masked image of person 20 to the left rectangle of the layout 21. The masked image is cropped to fit the rectangle.
In step 42, the artwork designer interactively creates the text portions of the page of artwork. He places a large font letter T in the left rectangle of the page, on top of the image of the person. He also creates lines of text, in a small font, which he places in the right rectangle of the layout 21.
Steps 36 -42 are typically performed interactively with a single layout application package, such as PAGEMAKER manufactured by Aldus Corporation of Seattle, Wash., USA or QUARKEXPRESS manufactured by Quark Inc. of Denver, Colo., USA.
A neon effect is an operation performed on a raster image. In this case, the neon effect will affect those pixels of the image of the person near the boundaries of the letter T. Prior to producing the neon effect, its location has to be defined. Therefore, in step 44, the artwork designer uses an illustration application package, such as ILLUSTRATOR, manufactured by Adobe Systems Inc. of Mountain View, Calif., USA, to convert the large letter T from a text representation to a vector representation, and to indicate its location.
In step 46, the artwork designer interactively creates a neon effect of a desired thickness around the now defined boundaries of the letter T, typically using a painting program, such as PHOTOSHOP, manufactured by Adobe Systems Inc. To do so, the designer "paints" a neon effect around the letter T. The painting program then changes the values of those pixels of the image of the person which are within the desired distance from the boundaries of the vector representation of the letter T to the graduated values of the neon effect.
After finishing the neon effect, the design work is finished and the artwork needs to be produced. The designer then provides the work to the production shop.
In step 48, the entire artwork is converted from graphical, textual and image (rasterized) elements to a raster representation. The conversion is typically performed by a raster image processor (RIP) such as the VIP RIPper manufactured by Scitex Corporation Ltd. and running on a MACINTOSH computer manufactured by Apple Computer Company of Cupertino, Calif., USA.
Prior to plotting, the page is "trapped", meaning that it is framed. For example, the Full Auto Frame (FAF) trapper, manufactured by Scitex Corporation Ltd., can perform this step.
At this point, the artwork can be proofed, if it is desired to check the output prior to committing it to film. A suitable proofing system is the APPROVAL proofing system jointly produced by Scitex Corporation Ltd. and Eastman Kodak Company of Rochester, N.Y., USA. Otherwise, the artwork is plotted (step 52) onto a film. Any laser plotter, such as the DOLEV, manufactured by Scitex Corporation Ltd., can perform this step.
As can be seen, the preparation of a single page of artwork is performed by many people and requires many steps or "pre-press operations" and many different kinds of devices and/or application packages. A production shop typically performs many jobs at one time, each with many operations to perform and each following its own workflow. Such a shop can be very difficult to manage.
The SCITEX MANAGER, manufactured by Scitex Corporation Ltd., provides a production shop with tools to manage the many digital files which accumulate and to determine their status at any time.
Israel Patent Application 106226, owned by the common owners of the present invention, describes a pre-press management system which enables the artwork designer to describe the workflow and operations which the production shop is to perform for a specific job. This information is stored in the system and is provided to the production shop workers as they perform the operations of the job.
The system of Israel Patent Application 106226 can be utilized to determine the status of a job and the amount of work each production area of the shop has.
Once the production shop finishes a job, it provides the results to the artwork designer. These can be digital files, proofs or plots.
If the results are proofs, the artwork designer will review them to determine if the result is acceptable. If it is, the designer will then ask that the production shop produce final films. However, it is very possible that the artwork designer will not be pleased with the first proof, either because he doesn't like the design or because he doesn't like its execution. In either case, corrections need to be made and this requires that at least some of the steps in the workflow shown in FIG. 2A have to be repeated. In particular, the steps which occur downstream of the correction step generally have to be repeated.
For example, the designer may decide that T is the wrong letter; he would prefer a Y. Alternatively, he may decide that he prefers a different font or that he wants to move the T to a different location. These changes are editing changes; the workflow to produce the job has not changed but the elements flowing through the workflow have.
Unfortunately, since the neon effect is produced by one application in response to the specific look of the original letter T while the letter T is defined and placed in the correct location within the layout in another application, changing the letter T will not cause a change in the neon effect. Therefore, to make the correction, the designer first has to edit the text, in step 54 and then he has to repeat the operations of steps 42-52 (herein labeled 44'-52') but on the new piece of text (the letter Y in FIG. 2B). This is a time-consuming process which requires a significant amount of user intervention.
Furthermore, it is noted that the pre-press operations occur on many different devices (the term "device" will be utilized herein to denote both a device and an application package). The output of one device is provided to another via digital files. Since each device represents the artwork in its own native file format, this transferring of files requires that each device know how to convert between formats.
There exists an output page description language called POSTSCRIPT, developed by Adobe Systems Inc., which describes the contents of a page of textual and/or graphical elements. POSTSCRIPT can also handle raster images, but only for placement; it cannot describe their contents. Many of the devices described hereinabove are capable of representing their output with POSTSCRIPT. Thus, POSTSCRIPT provides a method of communication between different applications.
Ideally, if a correction to a page of artwork has to be made, one could edit the relevant file, rather than reperforming the operations which produced the file. However, POSTSCRIPT files are not easily edited.
Some new application packages have recently been announced which attempt to provide editability to the pre-press process. Most of them define image manipulation as manipulation of a multiplicity of objects (i.e. images). In these packages, the objects can be edited as desired; when editing is finished, the desired manipulation is performed on the original input image. Some of these packages are COMPOSER by Altamira Software Corporation of Mill Valley, Calif., USA, PAINTER/X2 manufactured by Fractal Design Corporation of Aptos, Calif., USA, IMAGEWIZARD manufactured by ImageWare Software Inc. of San Diego, Calif., USA, PICTURE PUBLISHER manufactured by Micrografx Inc. of Richardson, Tex., USA and COLLAGE manufactured by Specular International of Amherst, Mass., USA.
While these packages provide a flexible and editable environment for specific pre-press operations, they do not provide such an environment for the entire pre-press process, from input creation and image manipulation through to output.
There exists a single application, ECLIPSE manufactured by Alias Research Inc. of Anaheim, Calif., USA, which combines image creation and manipulation with stripping operations. While this provides a single environment for artwork creation, it requires that users give up their old applications and learn to operate the new one, ECLIPSE. Furthermore, the user is restricted to the operations provided by ECLIPSE.
There exists an image description language called FITS, developed by FITS Imaging of Paris, France, which describes only raster images and the operations performed thereon.
Adobe Systems Inc. has recently announced a new page description language, called the Portable Document Format (PDF), which preserves the essential look and feel of a document. PDF is output device and platform independent and can therefore be used to share documents between users working on different platforms, such as a PC or MACINTOSH computer, without losing the essential features of the document.
From announcements of the SCRIPTX language of Kaleida Labs Inc. of Beverly Hills, Calif., USA, it would appear to provide a similar device and platform independence for multi-media output.
None of the above described application packages offer the capability to implement changes in one element of an artwork when other parts of the artwork depend on the look of the changed element, especially when the other parts of the artwork are a different type of element, such as text vs. images. For example, changing the letter T to a letter Y is a textual change while the neon effect is implemented on a raster image. Thus, none of the above described application packages can change the neon effect when the letter T is changed to a Y.
Apple Computer Corporation has defined a standard, APPLE EVENTS, for applications written in two parts, a user interface front end and a core back end. Once a user has selected an operation to be performed, the user interface front end sends a command, in the APPLE EVENTS format, to the back end. The back end then performs the operation.
Apple Computer Corporation has also produced an APPLE SCRIPTS application package which can capture the APPLE EVENTS commands of one or more application. The APPLE SCRIPTS application can then rerun the entire set of recorded APPLE EVENTS by using the resultant script as input to the appropriate back ends.